


Slips Like Sighs

by FelicityGS



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brain Damage, Car Accident, M/M, Nurse - Freeform, agraphia, speech issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-11
Updated: 2012-10-13
Packaged: 2017-11-16 01:56:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FelicityGS/pseuds/FelicityGS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've just got a new long-term patient scheduled, and the care plans already been decided, gone over with family—an older brother. Steve's looked at the file and the charts: car accident, lawyer, some brain damage, and some damage to his left side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> We interrupt your regularly schedule Quiet Poetry update with this. This was a prompt from the Stoki livejournal and as soon as I read it I fell in love. Deeply. Passionately. Intimately. In every possible way I knew how to.
> 
> PROMPT:
>
>> Steve and Loki don't speak the same language, but they still get along for some reason.
>> 
>> +1 if no-one else understands Loki, even people who know his language  
> +1 if they create their own language together
> 
> How could I not? HOW COULD I NOT? _TELL ME!_
> 
> So here. No Poetry tonight, just this.
> 
> (This is not because I'm likely totally freaking out about how to organize and publish post-Poetry NOT AT ALL YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING SHUT UP)
> 
> okay. maybe you do. Anyway.
> 
> Enjoy~

Steve's seen all types in his line of work. Most people hear he works at the hospital and assume he's a nurse or a doctor and Steve, well, he doesn't see much use in correcting them. He's basically a nurse anyway most days, he went to school for it; went back again and now he helps people get up and moving.

He likes his job.

Some people are ornery, yes, and it's understandable; most the people he deals with, they've had an accident or a stroke, and now they're fighting their own bodies, suddenly trapped. Not everyone's the same, and most people appreciate him. Steve just likes helping them get back up, and especially likes when they grin fierce, feeling like they're in control again.

They've just got a new long-term patient scheduled and the care plans already been decided, gone over with family—an older brother. Steve's looked at the file and the charts: car accident, lawyer, some brain damage, and some damage to his left side.

Steve figures he's got a good chance to be one of the difficult ones but he doesn't think much else about Mr. Laufey until he actually meets him in the afternoon, first appointment after lunch. Peggy's actually the nurse who's checking on him when Steve comes in—these first few sessions are going to just be in Mr. Laufey's room until they'll be able to risk him getting up.

Peggy flashes Steve a smile and stops him outside the door to Mr. Laufey's room.

"He can't talk, though he hasn't really tried since when he first woke up. Dr. Banner's notes say there may be more extensive brain damage, so be nice, okay?"

"Sure thing," Steve says. Peggy would say that to anyone; Steve doesn't take it personally like some of the other staff might. "You guys pick a date yet?"

"Right! We did. I'll make sure to send you an invite so you can get the time off, too." Peggy flashes him a smile before she hurries off.

Mr. Laufey is staring a little to the side, face turned away from the door when Steve comes in. His right hand is drumming a little on the blanket; his left side is covered in bandages but no casts, which is something at least; most his hair is gone, head bandaged. He's tall even reclined in the bed, lean and all thin bones that make Steve wonder how he'd missed breaking any. Well, there's a few hairline fractures, but nothing major. Steve clears his throat and gives a quick rap on the door frame before he lets himself the rest the way in.

"Mr. Laufey, right?" Brilliant, scalpel sharp blue-green eyes flick to Steve and make him nearly lose his train of thought. Might have brain damage. Steve's no neuroscientist like Dr. Banner, but he doubts the brain damage has done anything to slow that mind down. There's _intelligence_ in Mr. Laufey's eyes, sharp and bright and demanding; Steve _knows_ now he's going to be a difficult one. "Steve Rogers, I'm the physical therapist assigned to help get you back on your feet." He smiles.

The once-lawyer's face doesn't flicker other than the tiniest twitch down of his mouth.

"We're not doing anything too straining today, mostly just some stuff with your hand and arm." Steve moves around to the other side of the bed, sits down, and keeps talking all the while. People like to know what's going on, most the time. "We're trying get things to heal properly, nothing out of alignment, and make sure none of your muscles atrophy. Atrophy, you know, where your—"

Mr. Laufey makes the softest of snorts and Steve glances at him, flushing. He's going to need to remember that just because he can't speak doesn't mean he's stupid.

"Right. Lawyer, sorry. You probably know as many big words as I do."

Mr. Laufey just watches him, left hand curled loosely. His face is all stillness again.

"So this is going to hurt sometimes, but there's good hurt and bad hurt. You know the difference?" His patient nods. "Right. So, I know you can't speak," and there's this rapid flash of so many emotions—anger, hate, irritation, despair, loss, and more besides, "but I need some way for you to tell me if it becomes bad hurt. And, honest, I'd rather know before we start. Like drumming, or rapping with your right hand."

Steve refuses to look away from Mr. Laufey's gaze.

"Zh," buzzing soft noise against his teeth. Steve can see Mr. Laufey's jaw clench, teeth grind together in irritation, but he just takes the noise in stride.

"Right then. Good enough for me. Can you be louder if you need to?"

Mr. Laufey looks entirely startled that Steve is taking the noise to be an indicator of the wrong sort of pain, but he nods a little, face softening slightly. Steve expects that to be gone by the time he's done and headed off to see to the next patient for the day.

It's about two weeks before he starts helping Mr. Laufey about the room, and Steve doesn't know too terribly much about how things are going otherwise—he assumes well, though not well enough since there are no plans to move Mr. Laufey out of the long-term ward—but they get on. A few times he catches sight of Mr. Laufey's brother, Mr. Odinson (apparently Mr. Laufey was adopted), on his way out, Mr. Laufey looking like he'd been personally rained on when Steve goes in; other times Mr. Laufey will be frowning at the television.

(He can't read. Agraphia, it's called; casualty of the accident he was in. He can watch and process and understand, can write (poorly) with his right hand (he's left handed) but he can't read what he wrote. Mr. Laufey prefers not to write at all because of it.)

Mr. Odinson had been by that day, and Mr. Laufey is in a worse mood than he usually is about the visit, contrary to be contrary, face a dark scowl. Steve is a patient man, he has to be, but around what feels the millionth time that Mr. Laufey tries to twist away when Steve tries to help, Steve's feeling a bit testy.

"Zzh!" Steve flicks against the tip of his teeth, catching Mr. Laufey's arm again and straightening it out. Mr. Laufey doesn't actually struggle after that, just looks startled and surprised. Steve doesn't realize at first that it's because he's used Mr. Laufey's word (Steve is pretty sure it counts as a word—'stop'—and no one else is using it).

When they finally finish that day (Mr. Laufey at least a little more cooperative), Steve is writing down some notes in the chart before he leaves.

"Right, there we go. I'll see you tomorrow, Mr. Laufey." Steve offers a smile.

"Mm." Mr. Laufey is still watching him curiously (even though he usually will look anywhere but his charts when people write on them). 'Mm' is not a bad sound, or a good sound. Just a sound—usually indifferent. Steve kind of associates it with goodbye in a way, though it's the more friendly, singsong 'saa' that really means farewell. 'Saa' is just a bit rarer.

Steve hesitates a moment before he starts for the door.

"Is there something else?" he asks; Mr. Laufey rarely watches Steve so intently even in the midst of therapy.

"Lo." Mr. Laufey frowns, flicker of irritation, and gestures towards the chart. "L-O… Ts…." Mr. Laufey stops entirely, scowling, then gestures right-handed to Steve. "Sva."

"Oh. Loki."

A flicker, glimmer of pleasure uncoiling in those lake green eyes and Steve knows he's hit on it. He grins.

"Saa, Lo," he says as he leaves.

Loki smiles, tiny and fierce.

"Saa, Sva." He even bothers to wave, just slightly, with his left hand.

They keep working. Steve finds himself stopping by to see Loki when he has a little extra time, eats his lunch with him (after all, it makes sense, Loki is scheduled just after his lunch break usually). The man is clever, face expressive, and, to be honest, Steve enjoys the near sing-song words that Loki uses. They've actually been adding to it, Steve asking for the word Loki's replaced things with, Loki using a sketch pad to draw things—though he still can't read; Dr. Banner thinks he won't ever recover that—and they almost naturally fall into a rhythm, a give-and-take, sounds intuitive and soft enough that outside people don't notice they're talking.

(And maybe it can't be complicated stuff, like philosophy debates or court cases, because they don't have those words, but that doesn't make this any less worthwhile.)

Around week six Loki is safe for discharge, though he's still going to be visiting for physical therapy at least three times a week (which Steve is secretly quite grateful for).

"Tst," Loki hisses the afternoon he's getting ready for discharge; Steve cuts off what he was about to say to look behind himself. Mr. Odinson is in the door, looking surprised to see Steve there. Steve stands and offers his hand to shake. Mr. Odinson glances at his brother then smiles at Steve and takes the offered hand.

"You must be Nurse Rogers."

"That's me," Steve agrees. It feels strange, to talk in not-Loki's language in this room. "I've heard a bit about you."

And he has. Loki will write words down once for Steve, tell him the sound, and that's it. He knows that Mr. Odinson is nearly thirty-six ( _lezen-ses_ ), is married to Jane ( _An_ ), likes sports and hunting ( _la sols n onts_ ), has a single daughter ( _on au-ze_ ).

Mr. Odinson doesn't seem to know how to really react to that, so he nods.

"Well, he can't exactly tell me about you. How has he been doing?"

The temperature drops a few degrees; Steve isn't sure if it's himself or Loki that's offended more.

"He's not deaf and dumb, you know."

Mr. Odinson stumbles a little, frowning, and looks at Loki. Loki gives him a vicious, lop-sided grin before his eyes slip to Steve, face shifting to thoughtful.

"He's doing okay. Physical therapy still, but he's recovering well."

Mr. Odinson nods (Steve is pretty sure that now he'll never refer to the guy as Thor).

Loki gathers his sketchpads and pen, gets the cane that he's been using to make up for his left leg still being weak, and then starts on his way. Steve follows last.

"Sva," Loki says, pausing. Thor is waiting a little away. Steve looks at him, meets those lovely eyes. "Mesi." Loki holds a hand out.

Steve shakes his hand. Loki's grip is firm—well, firmer than it was—and has the hint of authority he probably used to have before his life got turned upside down.

"No lien, Lo. Saa."

"See o Ses-a," Loki corrects— _see you Friday_.

"I-o. Ses-a." Steve agrees.

Which is also pretty nice. Sure, Steve misses eating lunch and stopping by to see Loki when he has the time, but that's the nature of his job—gets close to people and they get better. It's not a bad thing at all. And if he tends to speak with Loki's language to himself, well, it's practice, he does still see the man every Monday-Wednesday-Friday and it would be pretty bad if he forgets.

Loki keeps getting better.

Steve sees him less and less.

He tries putting it out of mind. They're down to a session a week when it's finally time to go on his vacation. Steve's looking forward to it; give himself a little time to get over this weird attachment to his patient (just a patient), see Peggy off with Bucky (or should it be Bucky off with Peggy? She's certainly fierce enough), and relax. He hasn't really been going out as much lately when he's off work, so it'll be a good way to catch up with all his friends as well.

(Once, he and Peggy had tried to make things work for a while. Steve still loves her, a little, but he's happy she's happy with Bucky—they're two of his favourite people in the world and if he and Peggy couldn't work at least she can work with someone. Besides, they're pretty cute together, not that he'd ever tell that to anyone with Bucky in earshot.)

The wedding ceremony itself is pretty small, private; Peggy likely had a huge say in that. She's absolutely radiant in her dress, hair done up and falling in loose curls over her bare shoulders. Bucky's in his officer's uniform next to her, both saying hello to everyone. He grins at them both.

"Took you long enough," Steve tells them. Bucky grins and blushes a bit; Peggy just smiles.

"And how are things with you and your songbird?" she teases.

"What?"

"Oh, you know. Mr. Laufey? You two just get on so well, I thought…?"

Steve laughs (and it doesn't even sound bitter or hurt at all).

"No, no. Nothing like that."

Bucky is watching him thoughtfully.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," Steve says firmly. "Besides, this is about you two today. Stop making it about me. Hugs!"

They hug and Steve goes to the reception area. That will, he hopes, be the last of that.

Eventually, Steve finds Tony and Bruce hanging out in a corner, talking some sort of medical equipment stuff, Bruce about what would be nice to see in regards to the stuff he uses, Tony nodding and going off on long tangents. That tends to happen whenever the two get together. Bruce smiles politely when Steve stops by their table, Tony just keeps going with barely a breath to say "Hi, Steve!" and Steve's feeling pretty happy and at ease. These people are like family—and yeah, he works with half of them, but that's alright. Family is where you make it.

Then Clint drops by and Tony's off to the races with him. Bruce shakes his head.

"How's Laufey been doing?"

"Oh, alright. His last session is this week, said goodbye last week." And he had. 'Saa', not 'see o ve-a,' and he hadn't copped out of things, not really. "I hope he does okay."

"Oh, I'm sure he will. He talks a bit slower than he used to, stutters a bit over hard sounds, but he's doing alright. Speech therapist is pretty sure he'll probably get close to how he was before the accident."

"What?"

Bruce blinks.

"You mean, actual English talking?"

"Yes…? Did he not…? Oh right, you two. Well, I guess I'm not really surprised, it's probably faster than trying to stutter over noises." Bruce sips a bit of wine. "I don't think anyone else ever picked up on that as fast as you, you know."

Steve stares at his own glass of wine. He had thought Loki disliked using his sing-song tongue; Loki had certainly voiced as much once or twice early on. Steve hadn't known that Loki even was beginning to speak English again, or could—it made sense, Steve had known that there was a speech therapist working with him, it just… had never really sunk in. Because they had 'zh' and 'saa' and a hundred other words that filled the air like soft sighs. It didn't make too much sense for Loki to stick with a language they still had to create words for…

Unless Loki had enjoyed speaking it with Steve.

Steve runs a hand through his hair and sighs.

"Oh. Don't tell me you didn't notice?" Bruce asks.

"Notice what? Let's just… add on to my list of what I haven't noticed."

"It's okay, Steve. He used to be a lawyer, they're pretty good at hiding their real thoughts, right?" Bruce gives him a pat on the shoulder. Steve heaves another sigh. "Just, you know, he likes you. Why do you think he never gets a different physical therapist assistant? He made it pretty clear after that very first session he didn't want a different one."

Steve contemplates putting his head on the table and just sort of… banging it a couple of times.

The rest of his vacation goes by pretty well. Tony rented out enough cabins and halls at the mountain resort for everyone who can stay and wants to, and it's pretty nice. Autumn's in full show, all reds and golds, and it's really beautiful. And peaceful. And away.

It gives Steve a little time to think.

He's probably not going to see Loki again, if he's honest. No matter liking or what have you; fact is Loki's therapy is done and former lawyers generally don't run in the same circles as now physical therapist assistants. He's not going to just show up at whatever address is in Loki's file either—that would be unprofessional and, he thinks, more than a bit creepy. And it's a shame, that everyone else seemed to think there was something there and Steve never noticed or realized, but, well, life goes on and Loki won't be the last person that Steve ever meets.

Steve isn't wrong.

He settles back into his old routines, moves on. Sometimes, he'll see a bird or children will rush past and he'll think of Loki and what he might half-sing about these things (probably grouchy unpleasant things; Loki does not like birds or children (though he does love his niece)). Most the time, Steve tries to push it away. He gets his coffee in the morning, goes to work, goes home. Goes out with his friends and tries to simply enjoy.

The truth is, though, that he misses Loki and he misses the language without hard sounds. Possibly misses more than he would since he knows Loki had no reason to continue using it.

One morning, a day he's not working, he's still up and about early and about to head home after his morning run. He usually doesn't go for coffee on his days off, but it's a nice day, getting chilly, and pretty soon it'll be too cold to stay outside for his runs, so he decides to linger a bit. The coffee shop isn't too crowded or too empty, sitting in this sweet spot of a few open chairs but no entirely empty tables. Steve loves it like this, feels like you meet new people best in these sorts of situations.

He's just paid for his coffee and is turning around when he accidentally bumps into someone.

"Aa, sorry," he says reflexively, bending down to help pick up the change that was just dropped.

"Zh." A somewhat familiar pale, slender, and scarred hand swats his away, then they both straighten.

"Oh," Steve breathes, meeting lake green eyes that are sharp with irritation. "Lo." He blushes, runs a hand through his hair. "Sorry about that, I didn't—"

"Shut up, Steve." Loki's voice stumbles over the t's, not much but noticeable, a quick stutter and onwards. He pulls Steve out of the way of the line, and they wait by the counter to get their drinks. Steve tries not to shift from foot to foot, shuffle, or shove his hands his in pockets his jogging pants don't have.

Loki stands there, looking some strange contradiction of serene and agitated, dressed in a nice tailored shirt and slacks. People pretty naturally move around him and he does not look at Steve again.

"Uh, so do you come here—"

"You failed mention your absence for our final session."

"Um. Yeah. I'm sorry, I didn't think about it at the time and then you were already gone. And I didn't think that I should call you just to say there would be someone different." Steve swallows. That's mostly true. He also hadn't wanted to deal with saying goodbye properly. Loki's eyes flick to him briefly then away again.

Loki gets both their drinks. Steve tries not to look awkward as he waits for Loki to hand him his. Loki seems perfectly content to let Steve simply stand there, studying him as he takes a sip of his own drink.

"You are ri… silly." Loki frowns, clearly not pleased with the word but also clearly not wanting to attempt the tongue-tripping hardness of 'ridiculous.'

"Sou," Steve suggests— _fool_.

Loki tilts his head to the side slightly, then nods once, sharply.

"Es." Loki takes another sip of his drink. "O sou."

Steve finds himself grinning a little. He hasn't had reason to speak this in a while but it's still familiar.

"Osh-i." Steve pauses a second, then adds, "I miss you."

Loki hands him his drink.

"I suspect you are free for lunch? You owe me for simply vanishing sans a proper saa."

"Sure. Where would you want?"

Loki shrugs.

"Somewhere sans words."

"Sure." Steve hesitates, but then Loki starts towards the door and Steve just ends up following along. Just like when they'd go walking longer around the hospital grounds, Loki always a few steps ahead despite being the one recovering.

Only difference is this time, Loki stops to let him catch up before handing Steve his phone to put his number in.

"One," Loki tells him while Steve puts his information in.

"One. I'll get you then?"

"Es. Saa, Sva."

"Saa, Lo."

Loki's lips quirk into a smile, fierce and small, before he waves slightly, and heads on his way. Steve watches him for a few seconds, then turns to go home and clean up (and call Tony to find a place that doesn't have a menu but does have good food).

Wednesdays and Saturdays they meet for lunch, slipping between sing-song and English, neither paying attention to the odd looks they sometimes get, arms linked as they walk down the streets, leaned a little together so the words slip like sighs between them, one grinning big and broad, the other small and quiet and fierce.


	2. Author Notes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Felicity decides you all actually did want to know more language shit than you would possibly ever actually want.

So yeah, I’m a huge huge nerd for language. I love sounds, text, grammar, all of it. I’ve been exposed to a fair bit, have studied a fair bit, and I also love to write—and you pretty much need to know language at that point, ya know? All the same, it’s one of my favourite things, and when the prompt showed up I just knew I needed to create one for Steve and Loki to use.

The thing is, I’m also terribly _terribly_ lazy.

Okay, that’s not the only reason I went with hospital and brain damage. But it’s part of it. (The other reason is I could not settle on a movie!verse Loki and Steve plot arc that would work with the prompt and not make me hate myself for just fluffing it up for no reason.)

See, because this Loki speaks English, and Steve does, any language they came up would simply use an English grammar. They both now the structure of English—being native speakers—and so would naturally adapt their vocabulary to it. This is not unusual; you can find live copies of languages developing their own lexicon and using another’s grammar in all sorts of places (Creole is one of them, for example).

So right there about half of my struggle is taken care of. I don’t have to make an internally consistent grammar for a story I already knew was going to be both short and a one shot.

The sound, though, would naturally be critical. I spent about an hour researching and refreshing myself on stories of people who’ve suffered accidents like Loki does; how it affects speech (if it does), what bits of the brain speech and reading are connected to, that sort of thing. Once I had a decent grasp on it (I had started knowing that people could be affected like Loki and just wanted to verify all that and know the details really), I sat around in front of my computer making noise.

Yup.

I’m so freaking cool guys.

But no, really. I did. I decided which sounds would be within Loki’s range to speak, and to know that I had to pay attention to how air flows through the mouth. I had already decided certain things he would have difficulty with while he recovered—like ‘t.’ I started with my consonants—vowels are incredibly nice in that they rely less on where your tongue is touching in your mouth so I was less worried. (It’s a linguistics thing, and I’m trying to stay high-level, so we’re glossing over that)

I knew right away there would be no back-throat noises (g, k, h—all of these happen with the back of the mouth, velar and glottal sounds). I also knew I didn’t want plosives or stops (b, p, t, k, d, g).

However, that’s not a whole lot of consonants left for me to use. I went in planning on l, m, n, and s for the musicality; language is most interesting in it’s contrasts though, so I also allowed for v and z. They met my requirements of being forward sounds, and since I was already using s I was using what are called fricatives. F is a fricative and forward noise, but I left it out because I was avoiding voiceless letters—I thought that it was easier to pronounce a voiced consonant instead. (An example of voiced vs. voiceless is ‘v’ versus ‘f’ and ‘k’ versus ‘g’.

Fools with a Pen mentioned this below, but I figured I could put it here as well: " Just one note of my own from using some of this in a teaching context: to *feel* the difference vetween voiced and unvoiced sounds, put your hand lightly on your throat. Now, say /b/. Feel those vibrations? Now say /p/. No vibrations. Try with the pairs mentioned above." 

So now we have the following borrowed from English:

L M N S V Z

Then I turned to other languages. I mean, I probably could have written the whole language using just those languages plus my selected vowels (more on those later), but I didn’t. See, I really wanted it to be very soft as well, and while most those letters create a sort of soft sound they didn’t create the particular sigh quality I desired.

No, for that I turned to Russian.

Specifically, three sounds that, when spoken quietly, are very ‘breathy’ or ‘airy.’ One of them is middle mouth while the rest are forward, so I didn’t even feel like I was cheating, plus I was adding more of that lovely variety. They are

Ж Ц Ш

Which I’ll be romanizing as:

Zhe, Ts, and Sh.

They are a single letter though, so do try not to forget that.

So when we see Loki say ‘onts’, that last ‘ts’ is one letter, and it’s the sound of the Russian Ts. The one of those that’s a middle sound, Zhe, actually works—it’s Loki struggling to speak farther back in his mouth and it not, well, working. It’s why we only ever see it as that very first word he creates, ‘stop,’—he’s not exactly gung-ho to strangle on it again.

So there’s all our consonants:

L M N S V Z Zhe Ts Sh

Next is vowels. Vowels have some interesting properties—they are in no way ‘stopped’ or buzzed in the mouth (all consonants are reliant on where your tongue is in your mouth; not so vowels). So where we describe consonants in terms of tongue placement and friction, vowels are height and frontness. Vowels are actually tricky to describe in linguistics, so I’m not gonna go too much farther there.

When I started what I really wanted was just to use ‘a’ and ‘o.’ But that’s boring. No, really. It is, I was bored, and vowels aren’t as affected by tongue stuff so I said screw it.

The only vowel I threw out entirely was ‘u.’ It’s a back vowel—actually farthest back—and I figured that it would blend accidentally with ‘o’ when I played with it in my mouth; the air flow structure was very similiar. I also changed the default of ‘i.’ So my vowel sounds are all actually one particular noise and I can chart it:

A = ‘ah’

E = ‘eh’

O = ‘oh’

I is a special case, and again I’m drawing on my Russian. I used it to make the somewhat breathy ‘i’ noise Ы (Yery). I don’t know a good way to describe it to you; it’s sort of back and soft, very breathy. Occasionally, when I is used in a borrowed word (not one Loki has to recreate), it takes on the sound of the word he’s borrowing from (ie, ‘lien’, which is based off French.)

Okay, so there’s all my noises. All together, they are:

L M N S V Z Zhe Ts Sh A E O Yery/I

WHEW.

Okay.

Now what?

Oh right our lexicon.

So in the story, you’ll note that most the time words are intuitive accidental noises or Loki replacing bits he cannot say. In the first category, we have ‘zh’ and ‘tst’ — flicks of tongue that are easy, strangling on sounds he can’t reproduce readily in word. Each are both indicative of ‘hey!’ of some form; the former is ‘stop!’ and the latter is ‘behind you.’

The second category makes up much more of our lexicon, which makes sense. There’s a thoughtfulness going into this, as it needs to be easily remembered and easily replace the word it’s fitting for. I had to make some pretty snap calls; I decided both Steve and Loki would be familiar with French, Loki more so than Steve, but both familiar enough they’d catch words that mirrored it. I also wanted lots of single-syllable words (sighs are not double-syllable dudes). I also wanted numbers, because a lot of languages (and easy way of replacing days/months) use numbers appended with the appropriate term.

So I did numbers first.

_On Zo Le Ve Iv Ses Sev Et Nine Zen_

So where he can, Loki uses the original. Nothing to say he can’t use ‘seven’ other than preference—single syllables are much easier for him when they first begin to create this language, and it stuck. So ‘on’ is actually just ‘on’ as well as being the number ‘one.’ (Context is king)

To create larger numbers, say… thirty-six, you do this:

3-10 6, or lezen ses

Pretty easy.

Days, in turn, become easy. Count, with Sunday as one, then add ‘a’ for day.

Friday becomes _Ses-a_ — 6-day. So _Ve-a_ is Wednesday.

After that I would pick words as I went really. I’ve already established the general sounds I have and after that it’s a matter of figuring out the best way to shift it over, which, I felt, needed to have an element of on-the-spot choice in order to sound natural. This is something that someone is using, and if it took longer than 2 seconds for me to make that conversion then it wasn’t very much use, was it? You likely notice ‘z’ in a lot of places that ‘t’ shows up, which makes sense; some letters will naturally replace certain sounds more often and ‘z’ is the closest to ‘t’ that Loki has that isn’t ‘ts’. He wouldn’t use ‘ts’ to replace ‘t’ because it sounds like a plural and also, hello, he doesn’t have a lisp (I think it comes across Loki still has some pride. I hope so anyway).

Now, the French.

Merci is a lot easier to translate over than ‘thank you.’ Just. Saying.

So ‘mesi’ is thank you based off of ‘merci’ and ‘no lien’ is based of ‘de rien.’ (welcome/no problem)

I think that there would be lots of incidental easy French words adapted and interspersed in the language because it’s one they both share, and allows for some easy where sometimes there isn’t any. Loki knows it because he totally would know French; Steve knows it because he probably went there one summer with Peggy and we aaaaall know he’s the kind of dutiful tourist that would spend months learning basic language before the trip.

So there you go.

That’s how I came up with the language.

I do hope you —

OH RIGHT.

Saa.

Well, see, I have this weird thing for this fic where I was pretty sure that Loki would say ‘ta’ to people he was comfortable around or when he was in a particularly good mood. So, uh, ‘saa’ is really just an extension of that, a translating of it and probably one of the first words he came up with after ‘zh.’

So there.

Saa!


End file.
